Lapabot: a compact telesurgical robot system for minimally invasive surgery: part I. System description

The applications of robotic minimally invasive surgery (MIS) have widened, providing new advantages such as augmented dexterity and telesurgery. However, current commercial robotic laparoscopic surgical systems still have aspects to be improved such as heavy and bulky systems not suitable for agile operations, large rotational radii of robot manipulator arms, limited remote control capacity, and absence of force feedback. We have developed a robotic laparoscopic surgical system that features compact slave manipulators. The system can simultaneously operate one laparoscope arm and up to four instrument arms. The slave robot is controlled remotely through an Ethernet network and is ready for telesurgery. The developed surgical robot has sufficient workspace to perform general MIS and has been shown to provide acceptable motion tracking control performance.